Curled Up in a Ball

It had to be him. He was the only other human being out there in the National Wilderness Area.

“Where is our son?” This was the third time that Dough had repeated the question; each time with increasing menace. The man’s bottom lip quivered.

“I swear to you, mister, you’re the first person I’ve run into for days.”

“Look at his eyes!” Jennifer said, pointing at the dirty, disheveled figure that her husband held at bay with his 30.06 hunting rifle. “They’re moving back and forth! He’s lying!” Her own eyes flashed like the burning rag on top of a molotov cocktail of anger and fear.

“I swear to ya, missus,” the man said through broken teeth. “I ain’t seen nobody.”

“So, what?” Doug said, centering the man’s forehead in the rifle’s sights. “Adrian just disappeared off the face of the Earth? He’s an eight-year-old child! He disappears from our campsite and then we run into you. Am I supposed to believe that’s a coincidence?”

The man’s tears carved streams through his dusty cheeks as another stream darkened the crotch of his threadbare trousers.

“Pl… pl… pl… please…” he repeated to the four deaf ears which faced him. “I can… I can… I can help you look for him.”

His offer of help was met with the level of animosity that you might expect if he had confessed to interfering with the child.

“Why?” Jennifer said, “Did you hide his body someplace, you sick bastard!”

“No,” the man sobbed. “It’s just that if’n yer boy is lost, yer losin’ time to find him messin’ with me. I swear it. You kin cover more ground if you let me help.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Doug said.

“Fine,” the man said, “But if one of us looks forward, one of us looks right, and one to the left, we’ll have a better chance of finding him. That’s how we found my buddy’s pet rat when he lost him at the Rainbow Gathering.” Doug sneered with disgust. “Let’s go to the last place where you seen him and see if we kin pick up any tracks,” the man suggested.

They traipsed back to the campsite comprising two tents,  a Toyota Highlander and a stone-ringed campfire.

“That’s our tent,” Doug said, pointing the rifle towards the larger of the two, “And that’s Adrian’s.”

They walked over to Adrian’s tent and Jennifer pulled up the flap. Inside you could see an empty sleeping bag with a comforter laying beside it, as if it had been kicked off when the sleeper rose. 

“He would never have left this behind,” Jennifer said, reaching for a pink stuffed monkey that lay on the floor. As soon as she grabbed it, a small hand shot out from under the comforter and took it from her hand. She lifted the comforter and there was Adrian, curled up in a ball with Airpods in his ears.